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You know how people like to permanently append biblical verses, profound quotations of great historical figures, or little witticisms at the bottom of their e-mail formats? Well, a Tallahassee Community College professor uses a quote from Winston Churchill that would be good advice for everyone involved in the current campus controversy over faculty members forming a union.

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak,” Britain’s wartime prime minister advised. “Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

Viewed from afar, the TCC’s labor pains seem to have been avoidable — a boiling-over of faculty resentment sparked by a seemingly unilateral change in class loads. No change in “reassigned time” policies was going to make instructors happy, but having it spring forth fully formed, as from the forehead of Zeus, was disrespectful to the workers affected by it.

TCC President Jim Murdaugh recalled the rule for further retooling, admonishing the provost who so cavalierly tossed it out there. He came away from a staff “town hall” meeting convinced he and the faculty had improved their communication.

So he was rudely awakened by a Tallahassee Democrat inquiry about a Public Employees Relations Commission petition for a union election on campus. Details of how PERC will conduct the election are being worked out and, although a previous unionization drive failed, there’s no telling how this one might work out.

In a meeting with the newspaper’s editorial board, Murdaugh said state law requires college faculty to teach 15 hours a week, but that can be reduced by using “reassigned time” for other, non-classroom services to the institution. He said 81 percent of faculty at TCC have some reassigned time, teaching four classes instead of five, but many of those instructors teach a fifth class — known as “overload” — on overtime.

Murdaugh said one use of reassigned time that is hard to justify is "mentoring adjuncts." TCC figures a lot of time spent coaching part-time instructors could be put to better use in front of students.

That’s the sort of internal personnel stuff any big business or government agency would like to work out on its own, without lawyers or, in this case, unions getting involved. Murdaugh makes no bones about it — he doesn’t want the United Faculty of Florida, or any other union — and some of the union activists on faculty are equally adamant that the instructors, librarians and other workers will never be respected unless they can muster a united force.

It’s often said that academic politics is so fierce because its stakes are so small. The money involved for employees is not small change, nor is time allocation a trivial detail in the efficient operation of the college, but this is not an epic labor-management struggle. Murdaugh is not running some South Carolina textile sweatshop, and the UFF organizers are not some mobbed-up labor goons right out of “On the Waterfront.”

“I want you to be aware that we have tolerated more than we should have,” Murdaugh wrote in a “Dear Colleagues” open letter on June 9. “The uncivil behavior, innuendo, and fear-mongering employed by a few individuals has gone on long enough and is not representative of the faculty excellence our institution is known for.”

Union supporters say they fear retaliation for bucking Murdaugh and the TCC board of trustees. They are well aware that Florida is a “right to work” state, meaning no one can be compelled to join a labor organization or pay dues for representation. Also, while state law allows public employees the right of collective bargaining, they are forbidden to strike — and the college trustees and, ultimately, state Legislature hold all the bargaining chips.

But the union can advocate for the faculty, as a whole, and provide legal advice and advocacy for members who are unjustly fired or otherwise disciplined.

“I am greatly troubled with the tone the administration has taken with its attempts to silence the conversation,” a union supporter wrote to a colleague — the woman using the Churchill quote on her messages — who said she won’t vote for a union. “Therefore, I can no longer keep quiet. This likely means my name has been added to the lit of ‘troublemakers.’ I’m OK with that.”

The union organizers have accomplished one thing. They have Murdaugh’s attention.

Whether they need a union to keep him engaged is debatable, but it’s sad to see a rising level of vitriol in the groves of academe. It would be wise for both sides to take Churchill’s advice and listen — actually listen — before they resume shouting at each other.